Breaking New Frontiers for Gender Responsive Budgeting: the Kerala Model

Kerala is chartering a new course and addressing some of the long standing gaps that have existed in Gender Responsive Budgeting work in several countries. Although the state has initiated the process of preparing Gender Budget Statements there is a clear understanding that Gender Responsive Budgeting needs to go beyond that. The real achievement of Gender Responsive Budgeting in Kerala is that efforts have been made to reach women at the grassroots. Better still, it is not just in those sectors that have been traditionally perceived as “soft sectors”, such as health and education. Gender Responsive Budgeting work in Kerala steers right into the heart of sectors such as infrastructure, roads, ports, etc., that have been most resistant to gender incursions into their domain, let alone incursions of Gender Responsive Budgeting. What is fundamentally different about the Kerala model is that it focuses on developing schemes that address women’s specific needs and priorities and realigning other existing schemes to make them more gender responsive Gender Responsive Budgeting comes in to ensure that funds are made available for these schemes (or components that can contribute to gender equality within existing schemes) to the extent possible.